


things only heaven knows

by lithopsornot



Category: DCU (Comics), Harley Quinn (Cartoon 2019), Harley Quinn (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26364085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lithopsornot/pseuds/lithopsornot
Summary: the ribbons loop, they tighten, winding her, wringing the breath out of her, and then it all stops.-harlivy soulmate au
Relationships: Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 12
Kudos: 100





	things only heaven knows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sapphicwisteria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicwisteria/gifts).



the first time harley feels it, she is fifteen years old, rushing up to her apartment two stairs at a time, both her hands full of groceries her mom had unpacked from the car; she’d told harley to only take half of the bags and come back for the rest later, but there was no way she was making two trips up and down. the elevator had been under maintenance ever since they moved in so harley doesn’t bother checking to see if it‘s running before heading up five flights of stairs, it happens on the fourth. 

this weird tingling in her chest, like her heart is being squeezed from every corner. it’s not so much wires as it is ribbons, wrapping around her in a slow, tantalising manner, smoothly crossing over and under one another. harley closes her eyes, the feeling becoming all much to much to handle, but it becomes clear that there is no getting away from it as images flash in the dark she’s made for herself. the ribbons loop, they tighten, winding her, wringing the breath out of her, and then it all stops. 

harley opens her eyes, wide and flustered. hurriedly she puts down the groceries, needing to feel for herself what just happened, needing to make sense of it.so she gently places a hand against her chest, like it’s something made of glass, something fragile that needs to be handled gingerly. nothing seems out of the ordinary, everything is intact but still, an odd tightness has settled inside her. it’s unmistakable. harley fakes a cough to test the waters, it digs so deep that it becomes real as she doubles over. 

once she’s calmed down, she's able to write it off as exhaustion, shaking her head as she starts to head up the stairs again. her mother was probably right, she shouldn’t have bit more off more than she could chew with those bags. that was probably what happened, right? right.

she opens the door to her apartment, kicking it open as she picks the grocery bags up and walks in, promptly letting herself fall back on the couch as she puts them down on the kitchen counter. 

but the feeling doesn’t go away. not after her mom makes her a grilled cheese sandwich that she swallows down in seconds or after she’s spent a couple hours distracting herself by attempting credit card fraud for game money online. something’s clearly wrong. 

it’s only when harley’s coming out of the shower later that night that she sees it. in the mirror, a see-through chest, a beating heart wrapped up in red strings, like some practical joke of a present. she makes a fist with her hand, holding it up to her torso, they’re almost the same size. 

harley wonders, it’s one of the things she is exceptional at doing, wonders how far it will go as she brings an open palm towards her chest, will it pass through? 

no, it’s solid. she's not disappointed by that, it would make her weird if she was.

could this be a hallucination? despite what others may think about her, despite what only some muster up the courage to say to her face, she thinks even her imagination can’t stretch to this extent. 

harley stares a bit longer, her heart beats and beats and beats, the strings going along with it. 

she doesn’t tell anybody.

* * *

ivy’s sixteen when she first feels it. her feet in the air and blue skies above as she goes faster and faster on the swings in the playground. there is something budding inside of her, growing from the surrounding muscles of her heart, tendrils teasing and sneaking around in her chest. it feels like roots, making their way in, latching on. she catches her own momentum, feet now placed on fake grass beneath her. she looks down and sees leaf-like strings, a red heart that gives way to brown and green. 

she lets out a shaky breath, her hands tighten on the chains of the swing till her knuckles go white. she counts to ten and tries to be okay. 

it’s the first day of spring. 

* * *

harley is sixteen when a boy from school kisses her. or she kisses him. the memory’s all fuzzy in her head, plays out like a film on really aged tape. the background music cracks and sizzles in and out as she tries to get a real grip on the event. her friends tell her it’s important, the order, that is. it’s important, did you kiss him? did he kiss you? who kissed who first? that’s all they seem to care about once they hear about it. 

she doesn’t even know who they heard about it from, but she’a not all too shocked when they crowd around her in the school hallway either, demanding for details. after all, it was at a party, that much she remembers clearly; word spreads fast at and about friday parties. 

did you kiss him? did he kiss you? who kissed who first? 

harley shakes her head, demanding that the pieces in there start matching themselves up with one another, make a clear picture for her. she didn’t kiss him, she barely knew him, having only spoken to him once in english lit, when she asked him to move his things off her seat. so she’s sure, she’s almost sure, she’s pretty sure? that she did not make the first move. so, what happened at that party? 

she remembers thinking his hair looked funny, a weird yellow colour that made his face look all wrong, pale and sick. was that just the lighting or was it just his face? she remembers not liking his laugh, but enjoying the way he’d fall over at whatever she said. she remembers smiling when he called her pretty, him leaning forward and forward, her fisting her hands and keeping her arms perfectly still by her sides. 

did he kiss you? 

_ yeah, he kissed me.  _

who kissed who first? 

_ his lips were on mine before i could get to the end of my thought, the words at the tip of my tongue.  _

was it good? 

it was just a kiss, is what harley says. barely a kiss, a peck, maybe. it lasted all of five seconds, she didn’t taste anything particularly disgusting on his lips, there was no tongue involved, not like anything she’d seen on tv shows or while hanging out with her friends. she looks around at their faces as she answers, looking for some kind of hint in their expression, did she say the right thing? they hum and move along, the sound of lunch trays and chatter loud as they walk to their table but not loud enough. her thoughts don’t stop. 

what was a kiss supposed to feel like? all the things she couldn’t say aloud to her friends, they float around in her head, bumping against each other and producing a high pitched noise upon collision. it rings, persistent, but she doesn’t make a big deal of it. doesn’t reach up to rub her temples, doesn’t give it the attention it’s vying for. 

what was a kiss supposed to feel like? her heart must know better than she does because the strings that live around it, they’d never been as cruel to her as they had that night. when they pressed and pressed, silk to barbed wire, until she finally pulled away. the kiss that lasted all of five seconds punching the breath out of her, she remembers now, how the boy smiled afterwards.

harley didn’t look at her chest that night when she got home, what was the use of staring at open wounds? by the morning, they’d heal anyway.

it takes a week but eventually they scab over. around the same time, the boy asks her out, meek eyes and shy hands in his pockets, she says yes. one date can’t hurt. 

* * *

ivy is seventeen, studying for her pre-calc test on a friday night when she hears it. 

_thump, thump, thump_ , growing louder by the second. she can barely hear herself think, the problem she is in the middle of solving fades away, the numbers blurring as her vision does, her eyes stinging like she’s just stepped into a room full of smoke. 

_thump, thump, thump_ , it’s heavy, too. she feels it weigh her down, the roots inside her chest, the leaves, they all slump like someone’s hooked a stone to the branches. they dig. like fingernails, they sink into the muscle until finally letting go.

they leave her with tears in her eyes that she can’t explain. 

she takes a few moments to gather herself, pick herself up. drinks some water and gets back to her equations. it was only five seconds, anyway. 

* * *

sometimes, harley catches these flashes of red when she’s walking down the hallways. on her way to class, on her way to lunch, on her way out, it feels like they are everywhere but she can never get a still of it, always in too much of a hurry. 

when her friends are talking to her, when she’s zoning out, she sees glimpses of her in the corner of her eye. when her boyfriend’s arm is around her waist as she struggles to get her books out of her locker, she finds the girl slamming her own shut; it echoes inside her, harley blinks the feeling away and leans into the grip on her, having gotten pretty good at ignoring her constricting heart. 

it hasn’t been that long since the girl transferred to their school, barely a month, but there’s already talk circling her. harley doesn’t even know her name yet she knows that she used to be homeschooled up until two years ago but got kicked out of her last school and that’s why she’s here now. at lunch, harley’s friend told her that the redhead is smart, stupid smart, ridiculously smart, she went on about how it doesn’t make sense why she had to repeat a grade but by then harley had stopped paying attention, the girl was grabbing an apple from the canteen and making her way out to the parking lot. she doesn’t know how she knows this, but the girl doesn’t even have a car. harley doesn’t know why she cares, why she’s so curious. 

it takes two weeks to finally get a name. two weeks and a date with her boyfriend. they’re at a restaurant and he’s starting to complain, harley doesn’t even know what about by this point, just knows that there’s always something. her hair, her shoes, the menu, the view. she’s just about to tune him out properly when the redhead appears, a notepad in hand, asking if they’re ready to order. 

her name tag reads: ivy. 

she smiles at the couple politely, her eyes meeting harley and briefly holding her there. she wonders if she’s just imagining it when harley feels the strings loosen, that’s never happened before, they’re almost fluttering in place.

she stumbles over her order, her boyfriend laughs but she can’t bring herself to pay him any mind, fixated on the way ivy’s hair falls onto her face as she jots down on her notepad, the way she brushes it off with a huff. 

her heart feels weird; it feels like before. 

* * *

there’s bile rising up ivy’s throat, she’s so, so nervous. the last time a teacher had called her in after class didn’t go very well, a quiet conversation that sits uncomfortably in her head to this day. surely, she didn’t do anything this time, she’d kept herself low-key, out of trouble. barely talked to anyone in the months she’s attended this school. she taps her fingers restlessly against her thigh as she tries to think, ponder, over anything she might have done that could land her in trouble accidentally. 

her biology teacher walks in after what feels like an eternity of waiting, ivy’s got apologies and excuses wracked up on her tongue, just about ready to spill when she notices that he’s not alone. the girl from the restaurant two days ago sheepishly following. 

the girl waves as she spots ivy, a grin on her face. 

the roots in her—

“ivy will be your tutor for the rest of the semester,” her teacher says. 

the roots in her lock. 

* * *

harley’s never failed a test in her life. 

sure, she doesn’t put in the most effort into her studies but she does enough to get by, just enough to not raise any alarms with her teachers, or get her ear chewed off back home by her mom. she manages. harley doesn’t need to care about the carbon cycle or the calvin cycle (they’re interchangeable, right?) to get by when finals come around. she doesn’t have to know every boring scientific term by heart to pass, she _manages_. 

she can’t imagine what it must be like for people who can’t, that’s what she wonders as she lazily looks on to the student tutor program board, the volunteer’s list, when a familiar name catches her eye, practically jumping at her. 

ivy. 

the bell rings. there’s a pop quiz in today’s biology class. harley knows that the carbon cycle and the calvin cycle aren’t interchangeable, there’s this feeling in her chest, though, as she looks down at the test paper. it’s new, unfamiliar, it’s uncertain but it dances at a name, a colour.

the next day, there’s big bold ‘F’ staring at her. 

the next week, ivy’s handwriting is in her notebook, her highlights in her textbook, and her hair-tie on her wrist. 

the next month, ivy’s laugh is on loop in her head, her coffee order is scribbled on her arm and behind her eyelids, and her secret spot behind the parking lot, the bench by the trees, it hides two people. 

harley’s friends are annoyed at her, her ex is mad, she brushes everyone off; she tells them she needs to focus on her studies when they know full well she doesn’t, when she can’t remember the last time she didn’t get distracted by ivy’s lips as she talked about nitrogen-fixing bacteria. 

the ribbons, harley can’t remember the last time she felt so light. 

* * *

ivy has never been this close to anyone before. so close, that she feels she can hear their heartbeat. so close, that the beats seem in sync with her own. ivy has never understood what people meant when they said things like ‘the ghost of a touch’, but she gets it so clearly now. so, so clearly with harley so, so close. the ghost of her lips, the ghost of her hands.

and then it’s the real thing. 

ivy’s chest, the flowers that bloom, they are all dahlias, peonies and buttercups. cotton-soft, so unlike anything she’s felt grow in her heart up until now. they pour out of her, one by one. 

* * *

ah, harley thinks, so that’s what a kiss is supposed to feel like. 

the ribbons unravel, pooling at their feet. 

**Author's Note:**

> happy 1 year anniversary (1 year and some change)


End file.
